


No Place In The World

by flipflop_diva



Series: This Place In The World [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, During Canon, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Natasha Feels, Natasha-centric, POV Natasha Romanov, Pre-Relationship, Red Room, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 04:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6315349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard to trust anyone when you've been trained your whole life not to. Set during CA:TWS. Part 1 of 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Place In The World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep/gifts).



> Happy Purim, soundingonlyatnightasyousleep! I stalked your tumblr to see what kinds of things you might like, so I really hope you enjoy this! (Even if this part is more of an intro than anything.)

_Never trust anyone._

It was a lesson drilled into her head long before she even understood what it really meant. Back when her hands were so small, they could barely hold some of the rifles they slid into them. Back when her entire world consisted of training and more training and not ever letting anyone see you quit. Or fail. Especially not fail.

_Never trust anyone._

The first person Natasha remembered ever really completely trusting had been her Red Room handler. She supposed that, before then, she had once trusted her biological parents, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t remember anything about them. Not their faces or their voices or the way they smelled. Not even the hint of a memory that tickled your mind and made you aware there was something there you couldn’t quite recall. (She had a lot of those types of memories — pieces and feelings of things she could never quite put together. She wasn’t sure how many of them were real or how many were the Red Room messing with her head, but she did know that none of them were even distantly related to the people who had borne her.)

She had never tried to find them either, never tried to figure out who they were. Not that she hadn’t been curious. After all, she spent her life gathering every piece of information she could, but something always held her back. She didn’t think about it too much, told herself it was because they weren’t important enough to her to know. She didn’t tell herself it was because she was almost afraid of what she might find if she ever did look.

Her handler, though, that first one, he had been like a father. At first. He’d encouraged her and smiled at her and praised her when she did something right. At least she had thought then that’s what a father was supposed do.

She trusted him back then. A very naïve little girl. Until the day when the older girls attacked her in the training yard. 

To her, it had been out of nowhere. She had fought, had screamed, but they were older than her, bigger than her, stronger than her. At one point, she had been on the ground, bruised and bleeding, and she remembered turning her head, looking into her handler’s eyes, begging him to help her.

He’d walked away, leaving her alone. She had been six years old.

She found out years later he had set up the whole thing, had wanted to see how well she could hold her own. She’d survived it — of course she had — but it had done its trick. She learned that day the only one she could really trust was herself.

_Never trust anyone._

Her whole life had been built on watching her own back. She worked with partners, listened to her handlers, trained with the other girls in the Red Room, smiled at her targets, but she didn’t trust any of them. Not even a little. Friends were a luxury that could get you killed, and trust was a weakness that could not be afforded.

_Never trust anyone._

It was a mantra that had saved her life more times than she could keep track of. Choosing to trust Clint that day in Budapest had been the hardest thing she’d ever done (and to be honest, it hadn’t been so much about trust as it had been about having no other choice), and learning to trust him every day after had been almost as hard. 

But sometimes … sometimes she wished it were easier. Sometimes she wished she could be different. 

Like right now. In this car. With him. Someone who was so easy to trust, so easy to respect, so willing to sacrifice everything …

He was talking to her, his voice low and steady. “It’s hard to trust someone when you don’t know who they are.” 

Steve wasn’t looking at her, just staring at the road as he drove, but she could hear the note of melancholy in his voice, and she felt her insides twist in a way they never really did. 

It wasn’t that she expected him to trust her. Why should he? She had never given him any reason to, had never wanted to give him any reason to. In fact, she had given him plenty of reasons not to. There were only four people in her life she had ever wanted to trust her. The first, her handler, had betrayed her. The second and third, Coulson and Fury, were dead, and the fourth might be her best friend, but at this moment, she was very glad he wasn’t here to be dragged into this mess.

It all came down to the same thing, though. She was never meant to be someone you trusted. The Red Room had made sure of that. Least of all by someone like Captain America. Even if a part of her thought that maybe sounded nice …

“Yeah,” she said now to Steve, almost thoughtfully. “Who do you want me to be?” 

It wasn’t the answer she knew he wanted, but it was the best thing to say before the thoughts in her head could go places they shouldn’t.

“How about a friend?”

She almost laughed at that. “I think you might be in the wrong business, Rogers.” 

She let her words linger in the silence of the car, turned her head to look out the window. She also was never meant to be the type of person who had friends (except for Clint. But that was different. And hard fought). She couldn’t start now. Not with Steve. Especially not with Steve. They were two entirely different people. They would never work. 

She turned her head back to look at the man beside her, to study him for a second.

_Never trust anyone._

No, it could never work. 

She closed her eyes, listened to Steve driving beside her and tried not to wish things could be different.


End file.
